Wayne Selcher1
26 de maio de 2025
Em parceria com o Observatório Político dos Estados Unidos (OPEU), o Boletim Lua Nova republica, em cinco partes, a análise do professor Wayne Selcher, de Elizabethtown College, sobre a erosão do consenso democrático nos Estados Unidos. Este texto é o primeiro de uma série para o OPEU sobre as notícias políticas nos Estados Unidos. O texto foi originalmente publicado em 29 de fevereiro de 2024, no site do OPEU.
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The Permeation and Supremacy of Polarized Partisanship
Challenges to Civil Discourse and Consensus-based Democracy
A New York Times-Sienna College poll in October 2022 found that 71 percent of respondents believed that American democracy is “under threat” and 81 percent believed that “We can fix our democracy within our laws and institutions.” However,
“59 percent of voters view the media as a ‘major threat to democracy,’ while 25 percent said the press is a ‘minor threat’ and only 15 percent said it poses no threat. The divide fell sharply along partisan lines, with 87 percent of voters who supported former President Trump in 2020 indicating they view the media as a major threat, while 33 percent of Biden voters during that election cycle said the same thing.”
Conservative politicians and commentators with a wide audience have been encouraging a backlash of populist outrage, anti-intellectualism, mistrust of “experts,” and skepticism of the liberal establishment or privileged entrenched “elites” who are accused of “suppressing the truth” for their own self-interest. This distrust extends to and impacts public policy on election integrity, government trustworthiness and fairness, official corruption, the honesty of the mainstream media, and the relationship between science and public policy (including in public health and climate change), among other basic issues.
Many conservative voters (especially) have turned to more openly partisan “alternative” media for a counter-narrative, to sources which describe themselves as truth-seekers and defenders of free speech, in pursuing ideas, leads, and conspiracy plots that are ignored or quashed by the liberal mainstream media. Such sources are often sensationalist, alarmist, combative, and full of allegations that turn out to lack proof. But they deliberately provide a sense for their audience of being “in the know,” belonging to a patriotic political community, while the majority of the population is still being deceived by the “establishment” media. News sources countering the mainstream narrative are definitely more common, visited, and influential on the right than on the left, for example, Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit, Patriot News Alerts, and the Right Side Broadcasting Network on YouTube.
Standard journalistic principles such as accuracy and substantiation of claims are often minor considerations with such sources, relative to keeping the audience emotionally engaged. It was well-established in the evidence in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems that Fox News continued to push false narratives claiming fraud in the 2020 elections well after the network commentators themselves disbelieved them and no substantial evidence was uncovered, because that is what the conservative audience base wanted to hear. The net result is a nation with essentially two disparate and divergent streams of focus, narratives, information, analysis, and worldviews– the largely liberal “mainstream” and the conservative “alternatives.”
In mid-2023, Fox News continued to be a vital and influential apologist for and defender of Trump against his criminal indictments by federal and state law enforcement systems, following his line that the real danger to democracy is the Biden administration’s “corruption” and alleged “weaponization” of the Justice Department for partisan purposes. Like Trump, Fox deflects from the growing legal charges against Trump by highlighting Republican charges against and investigations of the Biden administration and Biden’s son Hunter, to discredit the even-handedness of the legal systems themselves and to question the legitimacy of the criminal indictments rather than assigning any guilt to Trump or acknowledging the seriousness of the charges. Fox’s constant theme is that Trump did nothing wrong, or nothing at a level of seriousness that Democrats have not done, but is an innocent man who is being unjustly persecuted by his political opponents to cripple his chances of winning the presidency in November 2024.
A July 2023 poll by the New York Times and Sienna College found that A) those registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who relied on Fox News as their main news source were far more likely than B) those registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents with a more varied range of more mainstream sources to believe that Trump did not commit any serious federal crimes (91% vs. 52%), that he was just properly contesting the results of the election of 2020 after election day (83% vs. 58%), and that Republicans must continue to support Trump (85% vs. 49%). Those who heavily followed other conservative sources mirrored the same attitudes as the Fox devotees.
In the online-driven 2024 election campaign, widespread artificial intelligence-created news and opinion content and AI-fueled deepfake videos, faked images, and massively generated bot-driven election propaganda, false narratives, or misleading or outright false news, with ready sharing without regard to accuracy, would threaten what credibility the already distrustful and confused public would still find in whatever news flows on which they rely. The dangers of starkly clashing partisan perceptions, dialogues, and news flows on race relations and the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, were dramatized in summer 2020 at a tense time of sometimes violent demonstrations and counter-reactions over racial issues and the high-profile deaths of Blacks at the hands of police.
An April 2022 Economist/YouGov poll revealed drastically sharp disparities in the news sources and media personalities trusted and favored by Republicans, those by the Democrats, and those by the public as a whole. The poll concluded that “there are very few [news] organizations that are trusted by more than a small proportion of Americans on both sides of the political aisle.” Media bias and the extent of the large disparity in what is covered and given meaning by the conservative versus the liberal media (almost separate dialogues or two versions of “the truth”) is shown graphically by Ground News, especially in the “Blindspot” section. The large AllSides website is excellent for a broad objective introduction and guide to hundreds of American news sources and their left-center-right biases, if any. This site also has a useful Red-Blue Translator to explain common phrases in partisan usage.
Most-used “fact- check” sites include Rumor Guard, News Guard, AFP Fact Check, Snopes, Media Bias/Fact Check, PolitiFact, Washington Post Fact Checker, and FactCheck.org. The News Literacy Project (“A future founded on facts”) strives in a practical way to help its users “determine the credibility of news and other information and to recognize the standards of fact-based journalism to know what to trust, share and act on.” Regarding ongoing partisan-oriented fact-checkers, the Media Research Center focuses on criticism of the left-wing media and popular culture, while Media Matters for America is a critic of the right-wing news media and reporting.
Almost all basic issues suffer from gravitation toward a strong partisan spin and conformity, with sharply conflicting priorities, narratives, and positions, including about the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, evaluation of former President Trump, how national history should be taught, rights of LGBTQ and trans persons, abortion, the state of moral values, school shootings, high-profile self-defense shootings, monuments to historic figures, election laws, integrity, and results, reports of official investigations (such as the May 2023 Durham report), climate change, viruses, and vaccines. The wide-ranging dispute over basic national values, even over the nature of the country itself, is often called the “culture wars.”
As an example, July 2023 produced extreme weather in the U.S. and elsewhere and was registered as the hottest month on record in the world. A July 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that 85 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents believed that climate change was a factor in those extremes, but only 35 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents did so. Democrats were also far more likely to say that weather extremes are becoming more severe (87 percent) than were Republicans (37 percent). In addition to disputing the science involved, Republicans tend to see the climate change issue mainly as an unwanted opportunity for Democrats to create a far larger government, with huge new expenditures, bureaucracy, and regulations.
Results of most public opinion polls vary substantially by political party identification, and events or institutions are given partisan twists, even on topics that would previously have been considered “non-political,” such as the teaching of mathematics. Republicans have much less faith in the scientific community than do Democrats, a long-standing skepticism that predates Trump’s influence on the party.
There are strong partisan divides on many key aspects of the ailing public education system, as shown graphically by Pew Research. Reflecting Republican suspicions that higher education is “indoctrinating” students into being liberals, Pew Research also discovered that “Between 2015 and 2017, the share of Republicans who said colleges and universities were having a negative effect on the way things were going in the U.S. rose from 37% to 58%, even as around seven-in-ten Democrats continued to say these institutions were having a positive effect.” Sharp partisanship encourages focus on emotion-laden matters during political campaigns, such as debating “wokeness” in public schools, instead of addressing the many serious academic, social, and staffing weaknesses in the American public education system, as shown by international comparisons, among other measures.
Current reforms of the structure of civic education in the schools, essentially defining “What it means to be American” within attempts to change the political culture, are becoming more controversial and now include debates about even the date and essential characteristics of the nation’s very origin. There is a curricular clash between the contrasting critical concepts from The 1619 Project (stressing the date when African slaves were first introduced into the colonies and consequent continuing racism) and the patriotic concepts from The 1776 Project (stressing pride in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the formal establishment of the Republic, and the Constitution).
Discussion of racism in American history and current society is complicated by white ambivalence (especially among Republicans) about who the “victims” of racism are: “A majority (51%) of white Americans… think racism against people who look like them is a problem–but overall, far more white Americans (72%) say racism against Black Americans is a problem.” (Yahoo News/YouGov poll, July 2023) The revision of civic education now even brings up a partisan debate about such fundamental questions as whether the U.S. is a “democracy” (for Democrats, re universal participation and inclusion) or a “republic” (for Republicans, re order, constitutionalism, and rule of law), as well as how the overall flow and the details of negative aspects of national history should be presented. (Note how the contrasting nomenclatures align with the names of the respective political parties.)
Partisan preference and information selection played a huge role in how individual Americans responded to the COVID pandemic. In policy tendencies, Republicans were concerned about protecting the economy and freedom of individual choice regarding vaccination, while Democrats focused strongly on public health aspects, with some use of government mandates. Even after Trump as president boasted about his successful “Operation Warp Speed” project to develop vaccines against COVID, vaccine hesitancy among Republicans morphed into vaccine rejection, ironically as an anti-Democratic sign of support for Trump. Anti-vaccine myths and partisan debates about the origins of COVID spread, with Republican attempts to fix blame on the Democrats for the pandemic and a “cover-up” of its origin.
Positions on public health issues were determined for many (but not all) Republicans by Trump’s statements or what they thought about the Democrats, not by standard medical science or independent personal prudence. Among many conservatives in 2020 and 2021, selecting information only from anti-vaxxer sources, belittling “science,” heavily criticizing or demonizing Dr. Anthony Fauci (chief medical advisor to then-President Trump), and rejection of vaccination and government mandates for shutdowns during the pandemic became a badge of pride that was still a valid credential for many politicians in 2023.
Polls consistently showed that Democrats had the highest vaccination rates, followed by Independents, and then Republicans. As a result, in September 2021, the data indicated that “Of the 23 states that have new case totals per capita higher than the nation overall, 21 voted for Donald Trump in November [2020]. Sixteen are among the 17 states that have the lowest rates of vaccination. Of the 18 states that have new death totals higher than the national ratio, 14 voted for Trump and 12 are among the 17 least-vaccinated states.” An NPR study of about 3000 counties across the country in 2021 found that “Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden,” a disparity that NPR attributed to health care misinformation, including after controlling for differences in local age profiles.
In calculating the relationship between partisan differences in reactions to the pandemic and COVID survival outcomes in the April 2021 to March 2022 period, a study done covering all U.S. states and congressional districts and published in The Lancet Regional Health-Americas in December 2022 concluded that
“During the study period, the higher the exposure to conservatism across several political metrics, the higher the COVID-19 age-standardized mortality rates, even after taking into account the CD’s [congressional district’s] social characteristics; similar patterns occurred for stress on hospital ICU capacity for Republican trifectas [governor and both houses of legislature in Republican control] and U.S. Senator political ideology scores. For example, in models mutually adjusting for CD political and social metrics and vaccination rates, Republican trifecta and conservative voter political lean independently remained significantly associated with an 11%–26% higher COVID-19 mortality rate.”
There is scant evidence, if any, that such a clear disparity in health outcomes, as shown in many medical surveys, had any learning effect on subsequent party alignments in the public. Each side tended to continue to proudly regard its own pandemic emphases and responses as the correct ones, at the national, state, and local levels.
The partisan divide over the government response to the COVID pandemic was far greater in the U.S. than in any of the other thirteen democracies surveyed by Pew Research in August 2020, as was the sense that the country was further divided than before the outbreak. According to Pew Research, “Over the summer [of 2020], 76% of Republicans (including independents who lean to the party) felt the U.S. had done a good job dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, compared with just 29% of those who do not identify with the Republican Party.” Internationally, one major study indicated that resistance to masking during the pandemic was far greater among American conservatives than among conservatives in 113 other countries.
Regarding the general public, independents included, a time-series study by the American Enterprise Institute in November 2022 concluded that “It appears at this point that the vast majority of Americans think their votes will be counted accurately in elections across the country.” But also before the November 2022 elections, a Gallup poll on whether “the votes will be accurately cast and counted,” showed that 85 percent of Democrats thought that they would, but only 40 percent of Republicans did.
There is even a major partisan split on the “bedrock values” of the culture, what they are, and how valuable they are for future guidance. A May 2021 Pew Research poll noted that
“While Britons are as ideologically divided as Americans on issues of pride, when it comes to every other cultural issue asked about in this report, Americans stand out for being more ideologically divided than those in the Western European countries surveyed. For example, on whether the country will be better off in the future if it sticks to its traditions and way of life, the gap between the left and right in the U.S. is 59 percentage points – more than twice the gap found in any other country (the UK is the next most divided country, at 28 points).”
Regarding “What it takes to be an American,” essentially, the meaning of America, the same survey showed that, with respondents choosing elements of “belonging” from four requirements (sharing American customs and traditions, speaking English, being a Christian, and having been born in the country): “The differences between partisans is especially stark in the U.S., where Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican party are significantly more likely than their Democratic counterparts to see all four qualities as crucial to American identity.” This distinction is quite pertinent to partisan differences in ethno-religious identity and concerns about the cultural assimilation challenges presented by the large number of immigrants who have been entering the United States illegally or legally on the southern border.
Whites (those not Latino or Hispanic) made up 59.3 percent of the population in July 2022, Hispanics and Latinos 18.9 percent, Black or African-American (those not Latino or Hispanic) 13.6 percent, and Asian 6.1 percent, with the remainder from other origins. Foreign-born persons made up 13.6 percent of the population. Referencing data from the U.S. Census, Phillip Bump observes, with insightful graphs, that “… most White residents of the U.S. are older than the country’s median age, while most Asian, Black and Hispanic residents are younger than it. Whites make up 52 percent of the population under the median age—and two-thirds of the population over it.”
Population growth and the country’s demographic future are now very heavily driven by the non-White population. As an example of the shift, according to the U.S. Department of Education, “Between fall 2010 and fall 2021, the percentage of public school students who were Hispanic increased from 23 to 28 percent. The percentage of public school students who were White decreased from 52 to 45 percent, and the percentage of students who were Black decreased from 16 to 15 percent.” But the U.S. Government Accountability Office notes that “Schools remain divided along racial, ethnic, and economic lines throughout the U.S.–even as the K-12 public school student population grows more diverse.”
In this context of the ongoing shrinkage of the percentage of Whites in the population and their older age profile relative to all other ethnic and racial groups, there is considerable ethnic and racial antagonism at play in the White Republican base, which is older than the national average. According to a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll in 2022, 29 percent of Americans agreed that “Immigrants are invading our country, and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”
The more conspiratorial version of why this growing ethnic and racial diversity is happening is called the “great replacement theory,” held especially by conservatives, the far right, and White nationalists. In some versions, liberals are deliberately “importing” non-White populations to undercut White America (that is to say “mainly Republicans,” in that narrative). Further analysis of PRRI survey data concluded
“… a majority of Democrats strongly disagree with components of the great replacement theory. Republicans, however, are much more divided. A majority agree that efforts for diversity come at the expense of White people and that immigrants are replacing American culture. Additional analysis suggests that an increasingly non-Christian, non-White nation bothers them…. Our evidence suggests that roughly 6 percent of U.S. adults—which is not a trivial portion—lament diversity and endorse violence. More broadly, nearly a third of White U.S. adults are apprehensive about demographic replacement.”
To confuse the emotional aspects of the public discourse on such matters even more, fundamental census-based facts about U.S. society that are central to current national debates are poorly understood and distorted by the public. A March 2022 YouGov survey noted that “When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups;” that is, minorities of all sorts, not just racial or ethnic.
The Oxford Dictionary designated the phrase “post-truth” as Word of the Year in 2016, signifying “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Tom Nichols, Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, referred to this anti-intellectual revolt of distrust and dispute over facts as “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters” in his 2017 book of that title. An interesting and ongoing RAND Corporation project refers to this erosive social process as “truth decay.”
The concomitant trend toward politics as theater, entertainment, or “angertainment” is coherent with popular culture’s focus on entertainment for those with short attention spans. In public discourse now, including with YouTube videos and interest-based feeds, there has evolved the fulfillment of what Neil Postman warned about in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business: “… what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment.”
This cultural combination meshes particularly well with former “reality TV” showman Trump’s skillful use of TV (including constant and ample coverage by all networks), his current Truth Social platform, his river of bombastic Twitter posts when president, and his trademark working of a crowd or audience at a rally or a TV interview, with norm-challenging antics, anger, denunciations of the establishment, defiance, frequent name-calling (i.e., “the Biden crime family”), and exaggerations for the delight of his followers. Social media allows his fans to feel that they are dialoguing with him in real time. This performance style of high emotional engagement with supporters while president has been termed the “emotive presidency” by Good and Wallach. While the theatrics and drama go over very well with Trump’s followers, the consequences of infusing that method into American politics generally may not be healthy for a large and very diverse democratic polity that must seek broader consensus and solve a wide range of practical problems.
Misinformation and disinformation are most common and effective in times of social stress, and have been identified by many groups as dangerous for democracy and public health. See, for example, the 2021 report of the Aspen Institute’s carefully-named Commission on Information Disorder. The public overwhelmingly recognizes that misinformation is encouraging political extremism and violence, and threatens democracy, but diverges on just which ideas are misinformation or encourage violence. Citizens are more concerned about bias in the news sources of others than any bias in their own sources. To many, “bias” means “does not agree with my point of view.”
As Adrian Bardon, author of the 2019 book “The Truth about Denial,” puts it, regarding the questionable practical efficacy of fact-checking, “Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview… The failure of various groups to acknowledge the truth about, say, climate change, isn’t explained by a lack of information about the scientific consensus on the subject. Instead, what strongly predicts denial of expertise on many controversial topics is simply one’s political persuasion.” This perceptual blockage and its motivated reasoning in support of pre-determined conclusions are in operation regardless of which political inclination the individual holds. Bardon notes that “liberals are less likely to accept expert consensus on the possibility of safe storage of nuclear waste or on the effects of concealed-carry gun laws.”
The Brookings Institution stated that “Recently, emerging neurological research has shown clear links between despair and vulnerability to misinformation, right-wing radicalization, and violence.” They created an open-access “tool” “which demonstrates the links–and intermediating channels–between despair and misinformation at the level of populations and places.” This data identifies “the places and populations that are most vulnerable to despair and misinformation… The interactive presents county level information on despair, access to credible local news, cognitive skill levels for high school graduates, COVID vaccination rates, and access to higher education opportunities.”
The task of labeling online “disinformation” or “misinformation” accurately and fairly is difficult enough, including because of its volume, multi-faceted presence, and the First Amendment protection of free speech, but it has been politicized to a high level because of the inevitably partisan implications of whatever its results may turn out to be. Conservatives see a consistently liberal bias in the focus and conclusions of many fact-checking organizations, and liberals accuse conservatives of frequently lying or distorting the truth.
As of mid-2023, Republicans in Congress are aggressively investigating disinformation research, claiming that the heavily academic-based effort violates First Amendment rights of conservatives, particularly if the federal government is involved in any way and if conservative positions are more consistently flagged or censored as a result of that “fact-checking.” Some key information researchers are also being personally harassed and intimidated by conservative activists.
According to Pew Research in September 2022, “Today, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media,” but many were unsure in 2020 which sources did original reporting or just dissemination. Social media deliberately “rewards” more emotional, negative, and provocative responses and “shares” over mere “likes” in its algorithms, to increase traffic and user time on-site (“engagement”) This practice increases revenue, but tends to promote similarity in one’s content feeds, negative posts, and division of groups in ways that threaten democracy.
In January 2022, YouTube’s CEO received a widely-publicized letter of appeal from more than 80 fact-checking organizations around the world about its content-moderating failures, calling the platform “one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide.” In many such cases, rather few political influencers with many followers, and sometimes in coordination, are responsible for the spread of most of the circulation of questionable items on several platforms at once.
A study on the spread of fake news, based at Duke University in 2021, concluded that promoting wider anger and outrage is the chief user motivation for spreading fake news.
“Both liberal and conservative participants displayed a reduced tendency to share fake news that was discordant with their views… The researchers also found evidence that the indiscriminate desire to cause chaos was associated with sharing fake news, and low conscientiousness conservatives tended to have a greater desire to cause chaos compared to high conscientiousness conservatives and liberals… We found consistently that a subset of conservatives—those who are low in conscientiousness and driven by a desire to cause chaos–explained the majority of the sharing of fake news. High conscientiousness conservatives weren’t to blame for this behavior in our studies.”
Another study based at Indiana University and published in May 2023 concluded that “In American adults, more social media use is tied to lower empathy and higher narcissism,” which differed from results in Europe, where social media use tended to raise empathy. A 2022 Pew Research survey showed that Americans were considerably more negative about the divisive effects of social media on democracy and societies than the publics in numerous other countries. Republicans were somewhat more critical of social media’s impact on democracy than Democrats, and “Those on the ends of the ideological spectrum–conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats–are more likely than moderates in their party to say social media is politically divisive and that it has made people less civil in the way they talk about politics.”
Angry rhetoric and grievances have been encouraged and normalized, the extremes have been energized, divisive disinformation and conspiracy theories abound, caricaturizing and demonizing the opposition are rewarded within partisan bases, and anti-government violence is openly hinted at on the far right. A February 2022 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute thoroughly analyzed the pro-Trump, violence-approving QAnon conspiracy theory (openly amplified by Trump in 2022-2023) and the demographically widespread acceptance of its core beliefs among various sectors of the public.
“While followers of the QAnon movement claim a variety of different beliefs, the main threads of QAnon’s core theory are that a network of Satan-worshipping pedophiles control the government and media, and that a coming “storm” will sweep them out of power. The QAnon movement centered former President Donald Trump as its key leader, and said he was secretly fighting to unmask the evildoers who controlled the political and economic systems of power… Across the four surveys [by PRRI, 2021], around one in five Americans mostly or completely agree that there is a storm coming (22%), that violence might be necessary to save our country (18%), and that the government, media, and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles (16%)… Even when controlling for partisanship and ideology, media consumption is the strongest independent predictor of being a QAnon believer. Americans who most trust far-right news outlets like One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax are nearly five times more likely than those who most trust mainstream news to be QAnon believers. Also, Americans who most trust Fox News are about twice as likely as those who trust mainstream news to be QAnon believers. Partisanship and ideology are also major factors in predicting QAnon beliefs. Americans who identify as conservative are nearly three times as likely as those who identify as liberal to be QAnon believers. Moderates are almost twice as likely as liberals to be QAnon believers. Republicans are about two times more likely than Democrats to be QAnon believers… When looking at race and ethnicity, around six in ten believers (58%) are white Americans. Hispanic Americans account for around one in five (20%) and Black Americans for just over one in ten (13%) QAnon believers. Less than one in ten believers are of other races or ethnicities (6%) or multiracial (2%).”
Overall, interpersonal trust has become problematic, and general social behavior and public dialogue seem more coarse, with shorter tempers and more verbal abuse. A search for “consensus” usually involves expecting the “other party” to agree with “your side.” A July 2020 Cato Institute/YouGov poll revealed that “62% of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive… Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.”
An October 2019 Georgetown University Politics Civility Poll (pre-COVID) noted that adherents of each party tended to blame exactly the pillars of the “other side” for the deterioration of civil discourse: “Majorities of Republicans say Democratic political leaders, social media, large newspapers, CNN, and MSNBC are very responsible for our political division. Meanwhile, majorities of Democrats say Republican political leaders, social media, Fox News, wealthy special interests, and President Trump are very responsible.” Further, the poll stated that “the average voter believes the U.S. is two-thirds of the way to the edge of a civil war” because of partisan anger. This stark assessment about greater political violence may just be a reflection of the tendency in recent years to describe national divisions in sensationalist or “existential” ways, such as warnings of “incipient insurgency.”
In 2018, a national poll out of Penn State University noted that both Republicans and Democrats had a difficult time figuring out what really motivates the “other side.” Even more difficult was trying to take the perspective of the other side, to empathize with those fellow citizens, and see virtues in their preferences. Animosity toward the other side (“lethal partisanship”), more than identification with one’s own side, now drives partisan sentiment, furthering national polarization in “good vs. evil” terms. In the words of columnist George Will, the country suffers a “solidarity-in-animosity,” an existential conviction that “I despise, therefore I am.” As Will also observed, “Instantaneous digital interactions encourage superficiality, insularity and tribalism.” According to a 2022 Pew Research survey,
“Increasingly, Republicans and Democrats view not just the opposing party but also the people in that party in a negative light. Growing shares in each party now describe those in the other party as more closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent than other Americans. Nearly half of younger adults say they ‘wish there were more parties to choose from.’”
In September 2021, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics concluded from its numerous surveys that (excepted here)
“A strong majority of Trump voters see no real difference between Democrats and socialists, and a majority of Biden voters at least somewhat agree that there is no real difference between Republicans and fascists… Significant numbers of both Trump and Biden voters show a willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms if needed to serve their priorities… Many Trump and Biden voters believe the deck is stacked against them, and their commitment to democracy is wavering. Widespread disillusionment with the other side, and perceptions of a system that is rigged to favor the wealthy and powerful, has undermined faith in our representative democracy:
— On one hand, roughly 80% of Trump and Biden voters view democracy as preferable to any non-democratic kind of government.
— On the other hand, more than 6 in 10 Trump and Biden voters see America as less a representative democracy and more a system that is run by and rigged for the benefit of the wealthy.
— Overall, more than two-thirds support—and one-third strongly—emboldening and empowering strong leaders and taking the law into their own hands when it comes to dealing with people or groups they view as dangerous.
— And their willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms extends beyond the hypothetical and to a dangerous and alarming finding: Roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters—or more than 31 million Americans — strongly agree it would be better if a “President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts” (as extrapolated from the results of this survey). Roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.” “The divide between Trump and Biden voters is deep, wide, and dangerous. The scope is unprecedented, and it will not be easily fixed,” said UVA Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato.”
Even personal dating and relationship decisions have been affected by inter-party and social conflicts. A 2020 Economist/YouGov poll discovered that “38 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans said they would feel somewhat or very upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party.” This partisan gap persists at a level a bit above the international average, in spite of current strong acceptance in the U.S. of formerly controversial interracial marriage (at 94 percent in 2021, according to Gallup) and of same-sex marriage (at 71 percent in 2022, according to Gallup). In fact, same-sex marriage, once a major conservative target, has become so widely accepted in the public and in law that Republican politicians and the far-right have ceased to attack it, but focus instead on LGBTQ and transgender issues in the “culture wars,” where more of the public supports conservative views.
* Este texto não reflete necessariamente as opiniões do Boletim Lua Nova ou do CEDEC. Gosta do nosso trabalho? Apoie o Boletim Lua Nova!
Referência imagética: A crowd-erected gallows hangs near the United States Capitol during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol (Credit: Tyler Merbler from the United States/Wikimedia Commons)
- Wayne A. Selcher, PhD, é professor Emérito de Estudos Internacionais no Departmento de Ciência Política, na Elizabethtown College, PA, USA, e colaborador regular do OPEU. É fundador e editor da WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources, um guia para pesquisa on-line sobre os mais diversos tópicos. Contato: wayneselcher@comcast.net. ↩︎
